Community Forum
Plan forum and community-led promotion—Indie Hackers, HN, Reddit, Discord invites—without burning credibility on drive-by posts.
Overview
Community-forum is an agent skill most often used in Launch (also Grow, Validate) that plans forum promotion, community invites, and vertical-community marketing for indie products.
Install
npx skills add https://github.com/kostja94/marketing-skills --skill community-forumWhat is this skill?
- Channel playbook for Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Reddit, Quora, Discord, and Wikipedia-style brand presence
- Frames community-led growth as lower CAC versus paid with stronger retention when done consistently
- Pairs with cold-start-strategy and indie-hacker-strategy for first users and Build in Public
- Redirects Reddit post drafting to reddit-posts and umbrella strategy to integrated-marketing
- Community-led growth cited as ~90% lower acquisition cost than paid in skill positioning
- Indie Hackers ~23% conversion versus Product Hunt ~3% in skill positioning
- ~3.2x higher customer LTV with community-led growth per skill framing
Adoption & trust: 793 installs on skills.sh; 586 GitHub stars; 3/3 security scanners passed (skills.sh audits).
What problem does it solve?
You built something useful but posting once on Product Hunt or random subreddits is not bringing qualified users who stick around.
Who is it for?
Indie hackers and solo SaaS builders ready to invest time in forums and owned communities for distribution and trust.
Skip if: Founders who only want paid ad creative, enterprise ABM, or detailed Reddit post templates without broader forum strategy.
When should I use this skill?
User mentions forum promotion, Indie Hacker, Hacker News, community growth, Discord promotion, Reddit community, community building, forum marketing, or community invite.
What do I get? / Deliverables
You get a channel-aware promotion plan, messaging angles, and next-step pointers to companion skills for Reddit copy, cold start, or integrated marketing.
- Channel prioritization and promotion plan
- Community invite and engagement angles
- Pointers to reddit-posts or integrated-marketing when needed
Recommended Skills
Journey fit
Spans multiple journey phases - primary shelf plus alternate fits below.
Canonical shelf is Launch distribution because the skill is invoked when you are actively placing the product in communities and inviting users. Forum promotion, vertical communities, and invite copy are distribution mechanics, not long-run analytics dashboards.
Where it fits
Test positioning posts in founder forums before locking landing page hero copy.
Choose Indie Hackers and Discord invite sequence instead of a single launch-day blast.
Sustain Quora and vertical community answers that compound SEO and referral traffic.
Design onboarding that welcomes forum-sourced members into an owned community hub.
How it compares
Strategy and channel mix for communities—not a Reddit post generator; pair with reddit-posts for thread copy.
Common Questions / FAQ
Who is community-forum for?
Solo builders and small teams promoting via Indie Hackers, HN, Discord, Quora, Reddit communities, or niche forums who need a structured CLG-oriented plan.
When should I use community-forum?
At Launch when planning distribution and community invites; during Grow when compounding members and lifecycle content; at Validate when testing messaging in founder communities before full build.
Is community-forum safe to install?
It is advisory marketing guidance; review the Security Audits panel on this Prism page and never let an agent post on your behalf without you approving copy and account rules.
Workflow Chain
Then invoke: reddit posts, integrated marketing
SKILL.md
READMESKILL.md - Community Forum
# Channels: Community & Forum Promotion Guides forum promotion, community invitation, and vertical community marketing. Community-led growth (CLG) costs ~90% less than paid acquisition with ~3.2x higher customer LTV. Indie Hackers delivers ~23% conversion vs Product Hunt ~3%; HN and Reddit require sustained engagement. For cold start planning (first users, launch channels), see **cold-start-strategy**. For indie hacker strategy (first 100 users, Build in Public content framework, Indie Hackers tactics), see **indie-hacker-strategy**. **When invoking**: On **first use**, if helpful, open with 1-2 sentences on what this skill covers and why it matters, then provide the main output. On **subsequent use** or when the user asks to skip, go directly to the main output. ## Initial Assessment **Check for project context first:** If `.claude/project-context.md` or `.cursor/project-context.md` exists, read it for product, audience, and brand voice. Identify: 1. **Goal**: Leads, community growth, brand awareness 2. **Platform fit**: Indie Hacker, HN, Reddit, Discord, vertical forums 3. **Timeline**: One-time launch vs sustained (4-6 months for Indie Hackers) ## Forum Types | Platform | Audience | Use | |----------|----------|-----| | **Indie Hacker** | Indie makers, founders | Sustained engagement; authentic journey posts; ~23% conversion vs PH 3% | | **Hacker News** | Tech, startups | Show HN launch; ~1,300 posts/day; front page = luck + timing | | **Hackernoon** | Dev, tech readers | Content distribution | | **Industry forums** | Niche verticals | Discount codes for leads; search "[industry] forum"; post event/activity promotion; see **discount-marketing-strategy** for code strategy | | **Reddit** | Subreddit-specific | See **reddit-posts**; 90/10 rule; 29+ posts for traction | | **Discourse (self-hosted forum)** | Community-specific | Owned forum; full SEO/GEO control; see Discourse SEO section below | ## Discourse (Self-Hosted Forum) SEO If you run a Discourse forum (or similar self-hosted forum), SEO/GEO considerations differ from posting on third-party platforms: | Practice | Guideline | |----------|-----------| | **Guest access** | Allow anonymous reading for categories meant to attract traffic; login-only mode severely limits indexed pages | | **Topic structure** | First post carries SEO weight; write clear titles and substantive opening posts; avoid fragmented short topics | | **Sitemap & robots** | Discourse generates sitemaps automatically; monitor in GSC as a separate property (subdomain or subdirectory) | | **Content quality** | Merge duplicates, mark resolved threads, surface FAQ topics—forum-level quality signals affect crawl and citation | | **GEO** | Structured topic titles and well-formed opening posts are extractable by AI tools; forum format with timelines and accepted answers lends credibility | | **Subdomain vs subdirectory** | Discourse recommends subdomain for operational reasons; search engines do not inherently favor either for ranking—choose based on infrastructure, not SEO alone | ## Hacker News Launch | Practice | Guideline | |----------|-----------| | **Title** | "Show HN: [Product] - [specific problem solved]"; honest, no clickbait | | **Timing** | Tue-Thu; peak US hours; avoid weekends, Mon, Fri | | **First comment** | Invitation to engage; product status (beta/MVP); differentiated solution; try-it link | | **Assets** | Live demo, GIFs, screenshots, 30-60s demo video | | **Expectation** | Tra